Recovering from Social Media Crises

Jonathan Bernstein crisis communications, crisis management, crisis preparation, Crisis Prevention, crisis public relations, Crisis Response, reputation management, social media Leave a Comment

Mistakes happen – fix them with a plan

While Twitter and Facebook  are great at attracting potential customers rapidly (potential being the operative word), you can lose them just as rapidly via a silly or careless remark.

Just weeks earlier one of the bosses of a PR firm got annoyed with negative remarks being dished out by journalists (isn’t that their job?) about their client’s video game and tweeted a rather angry response. Something along the lines that he would be reviewing who would be getting the next game release.

Triple whoops! Journalist swooped on him and criticism of the game transferred to criticism of his remark. The result? The video game manufacturer sacking the PR firm, issuing an apology to journalists. The PR boss not only had to apologise to journalists, his staff and his firm but he also had to make quite clear that the tweet was his own work and not the viewpoint of his firm. The fallout and damage to the reputation of the firm could linger for a long-time.

Scenarios like the one described in this quote from a 79PR article are marring reputations on an almost-daily basis. While you can thoroughly check the credentials of whoever is responsible for running your social media campaigns, anyone operating on knee-jerk reactions is headed for trouble.

A social media crisis management plan serves not only as a set of guidelines, but checks and balances to make sure things don’t get out of control. Negative attention from journalists is basically a given in business, and a good written plan would have omitted the part about posting comments that embarrass one’s employer and self, perhaps instead offering ways to reach out to doubtful media sources.

As far as recovering from the crisis, the game publisher was right to cut ties with the PR firm, but could have taken things further to really turn this crisis into a positive situation. Because they already had the attention of journalists (albeit negative), it would have been the perfect time to create a campaign that invited and encouraged reviewers to give the game a fresh look.

The BCM Blogging Team
https://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/

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